


The Iron Cross

by vogue91



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Introspection, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 07:24:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13806324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: He would’ve liked to keep in his memory the sound of his voice and forget his words. Fore they were so damn true, they belonged with each other.





	The Iron Cross

He watched outside the window.

Snow kept falling since a few days now, without an hint of when it would’ve stopped.

He hated it.

While Feliciano played happy on that white, virgin surface, unconcerned with the cold, he stayed home doing nothing, but staring at those frozen flakes falling, frustrated by their absolute silence.

He hadn’t always been like that.

There had been a time, in more peaceful days, when snow managed to awaken something in him, like memories that didn’t really belong to him, but that were capable of giving him sensations never felt before, which could isolate his heart from the surrounding cold.

And, even though he hated to admit that, Ludwig knew perfectly the reason behind that radical change.

Gilbert.

Germany didn’t think often about him. He liked to pretend that he had never existed, he had erased from his home every trace of his passage, turning him into a ghost that had reason to exist only in times long gone, vanished, whose memory wasn’t so sharp as to shake him.

But he had never managed to do it completely.

As much as he tried, the shadow of that nation, so insignificant and yet so bloody vital, was still wrapped around him, blending with his own, following his every step.

It was the price to pay, and Ludwig knew that. A price that he hadn’t considered so high the moment it had all crumbled down, like a house of cards finding itself suddenly without its foundation.

How had it happened?

He had slipped through his fingers, like that ghost, which they both knew was absolutely real.

He could just remember moments, fragments of time stolen to the past, and yet those few moments were branded on his mind, indelible, emblem of a world where borders were bonds, and war itself knew how to be less annihilating.

A time where family meant protect each other, and learn to trust one another, as destined to never know the meaning of betrayal.

A time erased, tarnished by the flow of seasons and men, greed for always more power and willing to sell themselves even to obtain it.

Ludwig unbuttoned slowly his shirt, enough to take in between his fingers that object that since long had kept company to his heart.

He shivered for the contact with the metal, unable to dull its cold even with the warmth of his skin, and he stared at it.

The iron cross.

He was drawn to it, he brushed its outlines with a daintiness worthy of the frailty of crystal, not for sure to the resistance of hard metal.

And yet, he needed that daintiness, because he wasn’t going to risk to corrupt its integrity with a touch too violent.

He wanted to keep it just like the day he had received it.

Black inside, like his soul stained by the many wrong choices, the contours of the purest silver, fresh, alive. Gilbert. Prussia.

Once, all he had.

The cross, symbol of what wasn’t going to rise again, from ashes spread to the wind of a land, a nation, a friend, a brother.

He went to his desk, opening a drawer with the same caution used to caress the object.

He took out its twin, the less intact one, the one still stained with blood spilled only because of him.

Dissolute, for he had dissolved him. Because he had done nothing to save him.

 

_“You can pretend it’s not like that, but in the end we belong with each other.”_

He would’ve liked to keep in his memory the sound of his voice and forget his words. Fore they were so damn true, they belonged with each other.

And him, denying any bond to protect himself from a pain that he knew was going to come, had breached the borders, rampaging in the territory that had been his father and ally, trying to eradicate his own youth from memory, and what it brought with itself.

The memory, feeble but present, of an ephemeral happiness, destined to be crushed at the first change of course of the wind.

Occurred gradually, sanctioned in a moment that Ludwig was never going to forget.

 

_“I’ll cease to exist, and we both know that all too well.”_

His voice, bitter and resigned, echoed in the German’s mind every day, haunting him like a ghost.

Prussia had taught him all he knew. And he had done that with its brutal manners, at time eccentric, but with a constant and true care.

Thanks to him, Germany had survived. And the price for this survival weighed on Gilbert’s skin like a death sentence that hadn’t been late to become true.

Too many years have passed during which they had been estranged, where incomprehension had brought them to the point of no return. And Ludwig had wondered often what had caused all that bitterness, that seemed like flowing in his veins.

Then, he had understood.

They had drifted apart. Insults had flown, disagreement had brought them on divergent path, to the point of not recognizing each other anymore.

And yet, even though the guilt was ascribable to both of them, Ludwig had felt abandoned. He knew how paradoxical it was, how wrong of him to think of it like that, but he missed something, that fundamental part of him that had made him the man he was. And he wasn’t too proud of it, but he also knew that things would’ve ended up differently with Gilbert by his side.

 

_“The war has come to an and. So have I.”_

He was always right.

With that devilish smile on his lips, the only thing he had never managed to teach to Ludwig, he had faced his own end with a serenity that the German wouldn’t have known how to match.

Dissolved, erased.

As if he had never truly existed.

And yet, perennial symbol of that forgotten nation, the iron cross that had belonged to him, and that was still strangely warm.

Warm of his blood, warm of the irrational warmth of a nation vanished, but still alive.

Alive, in Ludwig.

He sat down, suddenly tired for the thousand thoughts tormenting him.

He held tight the two crosses in his hand, wounding himself with their edges.

When he opened it back again, part of his blood stained both. The same as Gilbert, but still cold, just like him.

 

_“I’m going away. But, in the end, you know I’ll never be truly gone.”_

“No, you’ll never be truly gone.” Ludwig murmured, closing his eyes.

And he saw him.

His brazen smile, his eternally young face, whilst his own started bearing the signs of an incipient old age.

Gilbert had disappeared, but it was a part of Ludwig which had gone forever.

That part of himself and Prussia which would’ve kept on living eternally in two pieces of ordinary metal, undefiled by time.

The iron crosses, witnesses of a time long gone, but still present.

The iron crosses, which wouldn’t have allowed him to forget the smile of a man he had hated and loved so much.

He put them both back in the drawer.

Close to each other, at least one last time.


End file.
